LinkedIn Releases 2019 Global Talent Trends Report

LinkedIn released the 2019 Glob­al Tal­ent Trends report, an annu­al sur­vey of hir­ing pro­fes­sion­als which helps to inform how HR, tal­ent acqui­si­tion and busi­ness lead­ers should approach their recruit­ing strate­gies for the com­ing year.

This year’s report focus­es on the tran­si­tion of the employ­er-employ­ee pow­er dynam­ic, giv­ing way to a more trans­par­ent, trust­ing and rec­i­p­ro­cal rela­tion­ship through four new trends: soft skills, work flex­i­bil­i­ty, anti-harass­ment prac­tices, and pay trans­paren­cy.

Here’s what we found:

Pay Trans­paren­cy — 53% of tal­ent pro­fes­sion­als agree pay trans­paren­cy is extreme­ly impor­tant in shap­ing the future of recruit­ing and tal­ent. Why? Our report found that 57% of respon­dents agreed the top ben­e­fit of shar­ing salary ranges is stream­lin­ing nego­ti­a­tions, mak­ing hir­ing faster and eas­i­er.

Harass­ment — With more high pro­file sex­u­al harass­ment cas­es tak­ing over our air­waves, com­pa­nies are feel­ing the pres­sure to respond. 75 per­cent of those sur­veyed noticed some change in work­place dynamics/culture over the last two years, and 80 per­cent said that their com­pa­ny has imple­ment­ed some harass­ment pre­ven­tion action in the last 12 months or is plan­ning to.

Work­place Flex­i­bil­i­ty — 72% of tal­ent pro­fes­sion­als agree work­place flex­i­bil­i­ty — the option for employ­ees to work when and where they’d like — is extreme­ly impor­tant in shap­ing the future of recruit­ing and tal­ent. Com­pa­nies that embrace work flex­i­bil­i­ty have a huge com­pet­i­tive edge and it’s hap­pen­ing — there has been a 78% increase in job posts, men­tion­ing “work­place flex­i­bil­i­ty” since 2016.

Soft Skills — With the rise of AI/automation chang­ing the job mar­ket, 92% of tal­ent­ed pro­fes­sion­als and hir­ing man­agers agree that can­di­dates with strong soft skills are increas­ing­ly impor­tant. In fact, it could make or break of hir­ing the per­fect can­di­date as 89% feel that “bad hires” typ­i­cal­ly have poor soft skills.

With employ­ers being held to a high­er stan­dard and employ­ees hav­ing access to more infor­ma­tion into both the pos­i­tives and the neg­a­tives of com­pa­nies, more two-way con­ver­sa­tions are being embraced—not just because it looks good, but because it’s good for busi­ness. You can read more about the find­ings here.

Method­ol­o­gy: Sur­vey respon­dents are LinkedIn mem­bers who were select­ed based on infor­ma­tion in their LinkedIn pro­file and con­tact­ed via email between Sep­tem­ber 18th and Octo­ber 10th 2018. Behav­ioral insights for this report were gen­er­at­ed from the bil­lions of data points cre­at­ed by more than 590 mil­lion mem­bers in over 200 coun­tries on LinkedIn today. This analy­sis was per­formed dur­ing Octo­ber 2018.